In France, the scandal surrounding Dominique Strauss-Kahn has unfortunately overshadowed a momentous celebration, the 140th anniversary of La Commune, mother of all rebellions. It only lasted two months and ultimately failed, yet its resonance has proved unequal, inspiring generations of thinkers, public policy makers, philosophers, economists and dreamers.

La Commune started on 18 March 1871 and ended in a bloodbath on 28 May. With the first (1792-99) and the second (1848-52) republic as models, La Commune meant to go further. And it did, with the most audacious public policies France had ever known. Insurrection sprang from Paris to put an end to Napoleon III's second empire, which had declared war against Prussia three months earlier. Eventually, an armistice was signed in Versailles with a transitional government. Then came the general elections in February 1871.

While the country elected a conservative assembly, Paris voted for radical republican leftists. Paris, which had heroically fought against the Prussian army and bitterly suffered from famine during the winter 1870-71, thought little of this new assembly which, in fear of revolutionary contagion, had moved the government's quarters from Paris to Versailles.

Soon, artisans, shopkeepers and workers – about 25% of the Paris population at the time, most of them ardent republicans, die-hard patriots and anticlerical Jacobins – went on strike. They didn't want their hopes and ideals to be confiscated by yet another generation of royalists and bonapartistes.

In Versailles, the government felt the heat coming from Paris and one night sent troops to get hold of 227 canons stored in Belleville and Montmartre. Sleepy but impassioned Parisians stopped the troops and persuaded them to side with the people. Two generals were shot down and it was the beginning of the insurrection. Wealthy Parisians from the western arrondissements fled the capital. A few days later, Parisians organised their own government, La Commune, whose 70 members represented the whole socialist and republican spectrum.

Seventy new publications emerged in just two months, among them Le Cri du Peuple, and the feminist La Sociale. They were followed by a series of progressive political measures: vacant apartments were given to poor families; municipal canteens were set up to feed the poor; a minimum revenue was established for all workers; private firms were required to have workers' delegates who met every fortnight; civil partnerships were created; church and state were separated; a feminist movement, L'union des Femmes, asked for women workers to be paid the same as male workers and obtain pay equality for school headmistresses; freedom of press was proclaimed; civil servants were appointed by popular vote; illegitimate children were recognised equal in rights with other children; education was secularised.

As if implementing these new laws wasn't enough, the Paris Commune also had to fight the French army that was stationed all around the capital. Then, as the Versailles government made peace with the newly created Germany, Bismarck insisted that Paris's uprising had to be crushed. On 21 May 1871 the Versailles government's army managed to break into Paris. A bloodbath ensued. The Versaillais shot down anyone who opposed them: 20,000 Communards were slaughtered without trial in a week; another 10,000 were sent to prison and 5,000 more sent to labour camps in New Caledonia, an island in the south Pacific

La Commune may have only lasted 70 days, but this laboratory of social and political experimentation, of citizen exaltation, of audacity and courage, paved the way for a better future and translated republican ideals into concrete social and economic goals. Visionary public policies that were created in this period, such as civil partnerships, the separation of church and state, pay equality, freedom of the press, trade union representation within private firms and a minimum revenue, have now all been accepted and made into laws, some only very recently. If La Commune teaches one lesson, it is that insurrection is the most sacred of rights and that what is required in politics is, as Danton said: "De l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace" ("Audacity, still more audacity, and audacity for ever").